The Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) belt is becoming very crowded with communication and science satellites. If a satellite breaks down, or reaches its end of life without exiting the GEO belt, then the satellite continues to occupy a valuable GEO slot. In addition, without further orbit control, these satellites will drift due to lunar and solar radiation disturbances, allowing them to wander the GEO belt and interfere with other satellites.
The current practice is to have a satellite, at its end of life, use its remaining fuel to exit the GEO belt to a super-geosynchronous orbit. However, this requires that the payload of the satellite include fuel for this purpose. As a result, the mass of the satellite for a given mission is increased. In addition, older satellites may not have made provisions for achieving a super-geosynchronous orbit, or through accident or the accumulated effect of maneuvers during the satellite's lifetime, there may otherwise be insufficient fuel to place the satellite in a super-geosynchronous orbit. There also is a need to remove malfunctioning satellites or debris from desirable orbits, to allow those orbits to be occupied by functioning satellites, or to move potentially dangerous debris to safer orbits.
In order to remove defunct satellites from desirable orbits, space tugs equipped with docking hardware have been proposed. Such vehicles would operate by physically grasping and holding a target satellite, and then moving that target satellite while it is attached to the space tug. Although simple in concept, a space tug that grabs hold of a target satellite is difficult to implement. In particular, it requires that the space tug maneuver into the immediate proximity of the target vehicle. The space tug must then grab hold of some component or section of the target vehicle that is sufficiently robust to allow the space tug to pull on that component to change the altitude of the target vehicle. This process is often complicated by the rotation or spin of the target vehicle and/or other motion of the target vehicle relative to the space tug. In addition, the space tug is required to precisely maneuver itself into very close proximity to the target vehicle.
Prior art systems for spacecraft formation-shape maintenance have been described by Coulomb Formation Flying (“CFF”). CFF systems are designed to maintain a specific orientation or geometry of the spacecraft comprising the formation. CFF systems examine how to maintain a specific formation orientation or geometry by evaluating how to use electrostatic forces to control the relative positioning of the spacecraft. With CFF systems, the formation center-of-mass orbit motion is not influenced to the first order by the formation's internal Coulomb forces. In addition, with CFF systems, all of the vehicles actively control their own charge in a collaborative manner.